Water level in DIY protien skimmer

I might have a slightly used one if interested ? I talked to my son this morn and he will dig through the pile LOL I let him have one then he went to a 150 and now runs a red sea Berlin classic as mentioned by one here that coralife is a good one also I have seen.them in action and a friend of mine who runs a LFS and has a personnel 280 runs one and loves them ..We used to make our blocks from Balsa wood and some other type of wood worked great. I'll call a old friend and ask if he recalls what we used other then the balsa wood. For your DIY I admire that but I'm spoiled since when I started as I said we had to make everything LOL even under gravel filters so now I will only make my own light sets and coils and acrylic stuff ..
Who said some old timers ??? I resemble that remark LOL

Also if you want to improve the operation of that skimmer then you need to have the line of looks to be 1/2 in. PVC from the bottom you have coming back up level with the inlet to run straight back from the bottom to the sump and controlled by a simple gate valve then water level won't be such a problem water temps and hydrostatic head pressure and salinity levels as well as water temps are affecting your set up now.. A Hartford loop will do you no good at all , because all that is a loop used on a steam boiler to allow room for steam expansion and allow the condensed water to get under the new hotter steam vapor going up the supply from the boiler to reduce pipe hammering and vapor locks. Gravity sucks and colder water is heavier then warmer water and way heavier then hot steam. The air entering that skimmer is cooler as it is in contact with the water inside the reactor it is cooling that water a little and thats all is needed just a little bit will make a huge difference in the pumping and draining and gravity is always constant . Thats why you have to drain from the bottom with your skimmer design.